Blackout Protocol: What Happens When the Lights Go Out? - Tomas Studenik

Transcript

[Music] So, uh, who is scared this is going to happen? Yeah, come on. Let's show more hands. You are not willing to admit this, but it it got you thinking what happened in Spain and France and it's getting closer and takes longer. Well, this is of course generated by AI. This is the vision how you might look under blackout. Check the expressions. It's not fun or enjoyment or

laughter. So, what do you think? Could crypto work without electricity? Let's take a vote. So, yes. Who who thinks yes? Okay. Yes. I don't know. I'm not sure. Uh this will not give you any answers. Uh my 25 minutes or whatever we have are meant to stimulate your thinking and maybe think about crypto and the people behind it and devices and networks and the way of life in a different way. And I

actually stumbled upon these questions when I read this excellent book and I recommend recommend it to everyone. It it kind it's it's an honest attempt to rebuild civilization if electricity um disappears. Um the case is not that of a blackout. It's uh more like aggressive COVID or whatever with uh millions surviving around the world. And the author Lewis asks a good question like how could we re rebuild our world when we lose everything that has been digitized uploaded in the

clouds and mostly that has been outsourced by ourselves to the machines. Uh my kids they no longer read books they don't go to libraries they just rely on a on a single device. And if you suddenly lose all the knowledge at your fingertips, all what chat GPT tells you um explains to you. So how do you build how do you build anything really? So this got me thinking what if that was about two years ago. What if there is a blackout here in Prague? And it's not a blackout of hours but maybe weeks or maybe months. And I I try to investigate

what's going to happen to all of us when we lose electricity. And I have a friend who lives who happens to live in Spain and was affected by the blackout. And what he told me was unbelievable. Uh in a matter of hours, of course, shops uh were left without anything to sell. Only the people who had cash, physical cash, could buy the water, the pasta, whatever they think that will uh that will keep them alive during a war. They really thought in that street in the neighborhood that wars has started that actually, you know, the Russians managed to to hack and switch off all all of Spain, all the

city and it's the beginning of the war. And there was actually a Russian living on that street who already put the flag out and like victory is here. Amazing. You wouldn't I it's crazy. And it's only ours. Now imagine what would happen in days or weeks. There actually is a study that was done in the UK and was commissioned by the grid operator by national grid that tries to predict what will happen to cities and society. um you know 3 weeks without electricity. Unfortunately, it's classified. It's an army, you know, material. The one that Tom Cruz gets to read not

me. But anyway, what do you think is this? Any guesses? It's a device. What does it do? Water. A water meter. A water heater. No. Come on. You are, you know, some of the prettiest guys around speaker. No. It doesn't have to do anything with water. Even though it looks it's actually a light. It's a light. You know, there is no electricity. You can How do you generate electricity uh instead of turning on uh your switch or connecting to the grid? So, this is a

gravitational light. Uh here you can see the strings. If I showed you the strings, you would have guessed because there is a bag of sand and you just lift it up and then as it travels go by gravity, it generates light. So why why this picture and why you should think about this? It's actually only when you lose the most essential part, when you lose all the luxury of resources and electricity, you start thinking really deeply about innovating your product, about other ways how things might work.

What is this dynamic machine? Dynamo machine. No, it's it's uh yes, it's a fridge. It's a fridge that works without electricity. It's an off-grid fridge they developed for rural parts of India which have no access to electricity. So it's it's ceramics and you put water on top and as it trickles down and travels down and evaporates, it cools down whatever is inside. So this actually manages to cool it down. The difference between the outside inside is 15° C enough for some of the veggies to be fresh for long. And

you know what happens is that they develop this for India. And then now it's a hit product all over the developed world because you know people are concerned about how shall we survive these blackouts or they have these cottages or tiny houses in the country that are completely off-grid and are solar powered. What if there is no sun? How do we keep our gelato ready? So they are starting to buy these products and this is called technically reverse innovation. So that's if if you think of a blackout or the state when you imagine oh what if there's an electricity how would crypto work is reverse innovating. So you innovate from

um like the the the the worst case scenarios and you and you and you can come up with ideas that get implemented later on even in the developed world. For example, did you know that even uh Albert Einstein came up with a patent for a fridge without uh electricity and actually it's now being developed uh in a real way to be a commercial product. a hundred years after the the patent was filed. So uh now you can come back home and say did you know that Alfred Nichan actually invented a fridge that needs electricity? They did with his colleague

uh Schillard and it's it you only need uh a heat source. So it could be fire underneath or anything like that but don't ask me for details. So what would blackout or the scenario where there would be no power for days, weeks, months mean for crypto business? You would need to rethink uh how the network might be constructed. So if there is no access to internet or servers, how the hardware might look. So um how would my crypto wallet work? How would I access it? how uh how to do transactions, how to validate and work

with trust in a community. So maybe one of the good ways as I listened to the end of the circus lecture, you know, you just need trust and how would you manage that and how would you coordinate globally uh if there is no chance to do it at that moment. So it might have a number of applications and some people most people innovate when they try to you know push the technology forward but they don't question uh the basics will be there like yeah there will be electricity there'll be all these rare metals we can mine indefinitely. Oh yeah, there'll be a sophisticated distribution system. The internet will be working. Uh people will

have their mobile phones. They'll be better and better. What uh my opinion, not just mine, it's a legitimate technique is is going the opposite direction. Get rid of some of these things you taken for you take for granted. What if there is no internet? What if the electricity is down and suddenly you have to think differently about how to build uh a product a new service? When I searched for a blackout um uh blackout proof or blackout ready wallet or any hardware nothing exists but I can tell you this will become a marketing term. And um I actually managed to discover

already few uh few companies that were thinking how to generate electricity without you know it flowing freely from the sockets. So you can use like gravitational energy to charge your phone. This is a a do-ityourself um method how to build a u uh a charger for your mobile phone. uh and I think a do-it-yourself skills which I it's called like hackathon hacking skills will be very important when you start thinking in this ways what do I need to generate electricity it might look like this and this is my favorite is is turning uh fire into electricity and it all this is already

commercially available so um you know that might be that might be something uh as an inspir operation what can come up with just seriously entertaining the scenario that um you will lose electricity for a number of days. So when I asked AI to come up with a good design for uh the blackout proof crypto wallet, it came with this device uh where the you could crank it up and generate some electricity. So maybe this is the now what's uh what's going to be

sold all over Europe at least uh because of course no one wants to lose all their wealth uh just because there's no power. And um I am uh um putting together this huge experiment how society would function what how people would behave and actually having or the impact on crypto could be studied as well if you want to help me. So we'll be doing an immersive artistic and um applied science experiment in March

next year in Prague where we will put people into scenarios of really living without electricity and studying how they behave and what kind what they are willing to do sacrifice etc. And so far we don't have anyone who could who would be an crypto expert and could get valuable insights and implications. So if you are into uh fun but a serious fun play science and thinking about how society will work under stress uh in cities then uh I'd like to invite you to um to join us to help us think through um good research

questions and be there when we start studying um how people behave under extremes. Right? So um that's uh that's the end of my very brief uh talk uh because I think there'll be questions and stage is yours. Fire at will. Thank you to Tomas. First of all, round of applause for him. Thank you. And I already see Chris with a question. I'm going to pass you the microphone. One second. There you go.

Excellent talk. Thank you so much. I'll be signing up for your Blackout Prague. No problem. Um, question I've got like you're clearly at a crypto conference now, so you're going to be addressing kind of this audience, but in terms of how you see old world technology versus new world blockchain technology, which do you think will fare better under blackout circumstances? Well, as as examples, real life examples have shown, it would of course be be like the old world tech. So, people need cash or gold or any of a really ancient um means of storing and transacting,

storing value and transacting value. But I think that unless there is a kind of readymade or something that takes into account possibility of there not being electricity, there being no internet, um it it's a big it's a big minus and a threat. So if there were longer blackouts, suddenly it could be a a blow to the crypto community, to any currencies based on blockchain that needs to somehow be centrally um you know in the clouds. If this is off, it will be another argument why the that currency uh kind of doesn't make sense, etc. So it could be a door inviting an

attack. it's not a a safe uh agile method that can sustain um such a external threat. So I I think it's it's time to start really thinking about it and maybe coming up with ideas and solutions. Thank you very much. I'm uh very I've I've got a lot of questions for you, but again I want to give you guys the space to ask them. Any more questions from the audience? Yes. Hi, I actually don't have a question. I had you more like a suggestions because uh few years ago I was I was involved in some Mongolian projects regarding to how to give them uh access to energy. So one

of the combusting thingy you had there uh actually it's patented by any by the Italian uh energy company and you can download the blueprints from them. It's for free and you can build it easily uh from home because they created it so smartly that anyone can do it them by themselves. So I just want to suggest actually you should check any uh you know the company for gas uh they do have it there. Yeah. Well thanks for for the suggestion. If you have any cases and suggestions please then uh send it to me. Just one comment. Um I also came across an interesting case in Cuba uh when the internet uh was still not there

but it was all around you know in the states around the world. Everybody was online already but Cuba not because uh it did not have access to internet. So the way that they managed to spread internet content without internet was that they had this network of messengers driving on mopeds around with a USB stick and they actually drove to car garages and repair uh shops and people paid to watch whatever was on the USB stick which was a curated internet content for that week and people gathered as a community to watch one screen uh and they paid actually for this. So there was even a way to get um

internet uh to screens without internet and it was a combination of new old that you might not expect. So that's actually interesting because I do remember 20 years ago we were gathering in pubs and exchanging DVDs. Yeah, it's the same like is this the same meeting in pubs, exchanging DVDs, but uh also they actually uh could be up to date uh by using this ingenious like old technology. So thank you for that comment and we I think we had question over there. Uh it's more like a a suggestion or other ideas that are related to this.

Uh so I know I think it's in India or maybe in Vietnam and I read about um this like some towns that are like very far from you know they don't have internet right they don't have maybe they have electricity they have electricity but no internet right and then um what happens is that there's like a motorbike that goes through those towns like once a week and then it connects to a local server that then it syncs the email maybe goes more than once a week, I don't know. But so they don't have internet, but they have email just with a delay, right, of several days. And so basically they sync the email and then you know the motorbike goes away and then that way they are

still connected. Um also this thing about Kuba with El Pal. Yes, El Pete. That was the name. Yeah, that's the name. And a pilot is like some people that create like a you know every week or every something they create guang right and and I read that there's also or there was something similar in North Korea of all places that there were in the black market uh I think there were yeah also this USB sticks with TV shows and music from South Korea. So they know K-pop there in North Korea too. They know it exists. Um and basically with these USB sticks that they buy in the street markets or or something. Uh and

then like the the last thing that is related is that there are many apps know that uh or many projects are about using internet peer-to-peer. So it's more like I I don't know if calling it internet but me it's more like messaging apps. No. So we have um briar like a messaging app. So you it's very primitive because you don't have videos or pictures or anything. It's just text, right? But it works with Bluetooth or Wi-Fi from, you know, one cell phone to the next, etc. And there are other ones. I think one is called uh Laura, I think. No, Laura is one of them. Yeah. And um I think there's like another one that I don't

remember now. Um yeah, so there's several. Oh, thank you very much. Thanks for the cases. Thank you. Any other questions ladies and gentlemen? We have a little bit of time. Yes, just behind you. Yes. Thank you. Uh again, not question but rather a comment about like old money like let's say cash against blockchain based money. uh I think actually like potentially like if there will be like suitable protocol developed blockchain money will be better in this case because uh we don't need a lot of electricity to run the phone and we can have mesh network but uh the old money they all on centralized servers because like real physical cash is just like minority of

the money and uh this minor even this minority there's like stored in the banks which can be robbed and things and things so uh like uh theoretically like uh yeah mesh network based blockchain gives uh in this sense gives like some advantage. Yes, good point. Thank you very much. Any other questions? We've got a little bit of time. No. Yes. Uh it's it's all right. It'd be too long a walk. Please. So in the case of blackout, what would you prioritize? um regain communication channels or regain access to money. Um

as in your example uh with a currency u imagine you've regained access to your um cold wallet or hot wallet but you need someone who regained access as well. Uh so even if you personally can um generate some electricity for you, you still lack the electricity for infrastructure like it happened in Spain, France and Portugal. Uh so what would you prioritize? Money connection something different.

Yeah, if I if I can answer, I'm I'm not myself a heavy user, but it might be a good strategy to be to have something like in the hot format and some something in the cold somewhere because there is it's it's unlikely that the um electricity will not come back. uh it might take maybe longer and in the meantime I wouldn't worry about uh digital money at all because it looks that you'll be busier getting access to fresh water uh being safe uh and of course uh water is is the most important and then safety uh comes second. So most

people instantly started buying water and worried about safety, their personal and that of their family. So you'd probably have other issues than uh thinking about your digital um money. It's funny because in Portugal the headlines for what people were in situations that people found themselves in when the blackout happened that they couldn't pay in cafe and number two was that they couldn't get to the beach. Uh which is somewhat a contrast. You've said that people thought that war started. Um it would be much better if

they realized that the war is going and although there are no evidences for now that it was Russia's work a lot of people assume it is and um links to the question what was Czech's um Czech Republic's response to that if you're aware of them because there were incidents in the past like uh ammunition warehouses were blown up several times. The ammunition that was supposed to go to Georgia or to Ukraine even before the full-scale invasion started. So, um there were also assassinations attempts of uh Czech

Republic weapon manufacturers. So, um it's funny not funny that people don't realize the war is going. Uh but are you aware what Czech Republic's uh plan or actions are? I will shortly reply to this. So the official explanation doesn't say much and the experts that I speak to in in Czech Republic they think that it was an attack really. So, it's nowhere official, but uh probably that is what what may have happened. And the check blackouts from the past were not that long, but it's still it's a it's a real it's a real possibility. And if someone had a malicious intent and wanted to

damage the grid and infrastructure, it certainly is possible. And it's currently a hot topic, you know, how to prevent these attacks. [Music]